


Old Grounds

by vikki



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Feels, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Missing Scene, SHEITH - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 11:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11057889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vikki/pseuds/vikki
Summary: There's no good coffee in space. There's especially no good coffee in Galra prison.  Fortunately, Keith saved Shiro a cup for when he got home.(soft missing scene from Season 1, Episode 1 featuring the past, the present, and a struggling coffee machine. originally written for the sheith zine.)





	Old Grounds

The vest smelled of dust, but it was warm and familiar. Shiro zipped it up to the base of his neck with a heartfelt sigh of satisfaction. It felt good to be in his own clothes again - tighter than he remembered, and a little stiff from disuse, but still his.

Not much seemed like Shiro’s, now - certainly his body felt like it belonged to someone else. His right arm whirred and clicked softly as he scrubbed his fingers back through his hair - hair which had grown out pure white. Whatever trauma had happened to the bridge of his nose made his breath whistle softly in his nostrils. It gave everything a surreal, floating quality, like he was having a vivid dream.

He left the bedroom and started for the kitchenette, where he could hear Keith moving things around. Three people he didn’t recognize were sprawled in the main room on the floor and couches, fast asleep in the predawn gloom. Only a dim light from the kitchenette cast into this side of the cabin.

The smell of coffee made Shiro’s nostrils flare. He positioned himself in the doorway of the kitchenette and watched Keith.

The coffee was brewing in the same ancient coffee machine Shiro had transported to the cabin in Keith’s freshman year. For a moment, Shiro was transported back: two vacation days, a whole desert to tear up on hoverbikes, and Keith, who had grinned and said ‘sounds fun’. They had joyridden off cliffs all day and talked all night; Keith wrestled the coffee machine for hot water for tea while Shiro yawned and waited his turn in the mornings.

Now, Keith blew into a coffee cup, then flinched at the puff of dust that escaped it. “Is that my cup?” Shiro asked, seeing the Apollo LEM schematic that decorated the side.

Keith glanced up at him, and Shiro saw his gaze flicker over Shiro’s clothes before he turned on the tap and began to rinse the cup. “Yeah.”

“Why did you hang onto so much of my stuff?” He had been missing for a year, his entire crew mysteriously swallowed by the unforgiving void of space. They must have been presumed dead.

Keith turned to face Shiro, leaning a hip on the counter, and wiped the dusty mug dry absently. He didn’t hesitate to catch Shiro’s gaze and hold it. “Honestly? I just had a feeling,” he said, with a helpless shrug. “I felt like you were coming back.”

Shiro let out a huff of breath. “I didn’t feel like I was coming back.” The feeling came out of the blackness of lost memories, but he knew it was true.

“Good thing you were wrong.” Keith finished drying the cup and gave Shiro a wan smile, one side of his mouth lifting more than the other in a familiar way. He reached for the pot of coffee, and held up the mug and pot together. “Want some coffee?”

Shiro nodded; the smell of grounds had filled the whole room to the point of making Shiro feel heady. “Did you brew this just for me?” he asked.

Keith shrugged again after he filled the Apollo mug to the brim with black coffee. “You remember what you wrote in your last email to me?”

“No, not really,” Shiro admitted. Sitting on an exercise bike writing emails to friends and family while they orbited Saturn, preparing for a slingshot maneuver toward Kerberos, might as well have been a lifetime ago.

“‘I’d probably kill a guy for a real cup of coffee’,” Keith quoted. “I wrote you back that I’d have a pot waiting for you on the recovery airstrip to keep you from going Godzilla on Iverson.” He held out the steaming mug to Shiro.

“I remember that,” Shiro said, with a little laugh. He took the mug by the handle and wrapped his left hand around the body; the heat seared his skin. “I feel more awake already.”

“After that tranq shot, you’re going to need all the help you can get,” Keith muttered under his breath.

Shiro closed his eyes, held the mug under his nose, and breathed in. Standing in the doorway of the kitchenette, the burnt smell of hot coffee filling his lungs, and Keith a foot away, the terror from the night before - strapped to a cot in a quarantine dome as he begged faceless, suited Garrison medics to not put him under - seemed far away.

He had no sense of the time he had lost; a year might as well have been days, or decades. He remembered only snatches of time after the abduction, each meaningless on their own: bright, burning pink lights, a wizened gray face, buzzing in his ears, the word ‘voltron’, whatever that was. But when he strained to recall more, all the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his heart began to race. Really, Shiro wondered, did he need to remember more than that? The sick feeling of fear was surely enough to know it had been an awful experience.

Keith touched Shiro’s shoulder. “You okay?” 

“Yeah,” Shiro said, though his voice shook a little. “Just … grateful to be here.” He opened his eyes.

Keith nodded; Shiro saw him swallow. He squeezed Shiro’s elbow with his fingers; his hand was warm and rough with callouses. The touch was comforting, and Shiro thought, I’m finally safe here. Safe, home at last with the person closest to him, and a cup of coffee in his hands.

Shiro’s throat threatened to close up as a rush of emotions startled him with their intensity. “I missed you,” he said. It came out almost against his will, and with more feeling and force than he intended, and his eyes began to sting. Shoot, he was going to end up crying. “I missed Earth, and I missed coffee too, but I really, really missed you.”

Shiro squeezed his eyes shut to blink away tears, but he could hear Keith letting out a shuddering breath. “Me too. I missed you, Shiro.” When Shiro’s vision cleared, he saw Keith rubbing his knuckles across one eye. “Glad you came back.”

They reached out to hug each other at the same time. Shiro held his cup out of the way, hugging Keith with his free arm as tightly as he could; Keith’s fingers splayed across his back as he pulled Shiro closer. Shiro closed his eyes and felt Keith breathe and thought about how close he came to never seeing Keith again. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

Keith didn’t answer; he just squeezed tighter, his face pressed into Shiro’s shoulder.

They stood like that for a little while, their breathing syncing and slowing like a meditation session, until Keith murmured, “You’re coffee’s gonna get cold.”

“It would have scalded my mouth before,” Shiro protested, but he pulled away; it was probably drinkable now. He blew the steam across the surface and away, and took a sip.

It tasted like burnt metal. Shiro’s eyes watered again, and he coughed. “Uh, wow.”

“What?” Keith’s expression went from complacent to alarmed.

“How much coffee grounds did you put in the machine?”

“One scoop, just like you always did.” Keith scowled. “What, is it bad?”

“It’s … strong,” Shiro gasped. “Is it a different brand?”

“No, it’s the same can of grounds you had.” When Shiro’s eyes went round, Keith protested, “I don’t drink coffee, and it smelled fine and didn’t seem weird. The expiration date is next ye--”

“Keith,” Shiro interrupted, trying hard to not laugh. “You’re fine. Thank you. Coffee just … gets really strong, if you leave it. Really strong.”

Keith looked disgruntled. “I didn’t know that.”

“You couldn’t have known.” He tried another sip, but it still tasted like it was ready to sit up and bark. “On the plus side, any sedation grogginess will definitely be zapped.”

Keith reached for the cup. “If it’s that gross, don’t drink it!”

“Hey,” Shiro said, pulling it protectively to his chest. “This is my welcome home cup of coffee. I want it.”

Shiro saw how Keith tried to fight his smile, but it twitched the corners of his mouth up anyway. “I can make you another with less grounds, you know.”

“I know.” Shiro nodded. “But I want the one that made me cry from happiness.” Somehow, in the middle of the sentence the statement changed from a joke to the truth. Shiro looked down into the mug.

“... I’m glad you like it,” Keith said, sensing his mood change. “I guess. You want some tea to wash the taste out later?” His smile was more of a knowing smirk.

The familiarity of the expression made Shiro feel warm. He sipped his heavy metal coffee and grimaced. “Probably,” he admitted with a rueful grin.

It would be both his first and his last cup of coffee on that short return to Earth, but the memory of it, he would find, would only sweeten with time.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic originally appeared in the Sheith Charity Fanzine (@sheithzine at twitter), which you can still buy in PDF form by for pay-what-you-want purchase.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate everyone who takes a look and try to reply to all comments. :3c


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